All Posts Tagged With: "best schools"

The reasons may surprise you

Snowy Edmonton, Alta. by Stella Blu on Flickr

Alberta is as a maverick when it comes to higher education. The province prepares students for post-secondary better than its neighbors, has some of the country’s most satisfied students and punches above its weight in research.

Now there’s even more evidence that the rest of Canada should pay attention to how Wild Rose Country approaches higher education.

New University of Saskatchewan research, which included 12,000 first-year students, found that grades for Albertans tended to drop just 6.4 points from Grade 12, but fell as much as 19.6 points on average for students from another province. In other words, a student from Alberta who graduates with an 86 average is likely to end first-year as an 80 student, while students from that other unnamed province would average 66.

One reason Alberta’s students are much better prepared is that they study long and hard to pass provincial standardized exams, which account for 50 per cent of their Grade 12 marks. Students in other provinces are graded more subjectively, making it easier for teachers to give high marks.

The higher standards are well-known. In recognition of the high standards, the University of British Columbia automatically raises Albertan students’ grades two per cent when they apply.

But it’s a lot more than standardized tests that make Alberta’s schools succed. Here are six more reasons the rest of Canada ought to pay closer attention to Alberta’s higher education system.

1. Public funding of universities is highest in Alberta.
Statistics Canada says that 72 per cent of funding for Alberta universities came from public sources in 2009. The next highest was Newfoundland at 69 per cent. It was only 49 per cent in Nova Scotia.

2. Albertans outperform their peers well before university.
Alberta’s 15-year-olds came second in the world in reading and fourth in the world in science in the 2009 PISA study, the gold-standard international test. Those were the top scores in Canada.

3. Alberta has two teaching-focused universities that work.
Grant MacEwan and Mount Royal Univeristy have faculty who spend most of their days teaching, rather than conducting research—unlike nearly every university east of Edmonton. And both institutions score exceptionally well on the National Survey of Student Engagement. When asked “if you could start over, would go to the institution you are now attending?,” 50 per cent of Mount Royal seniors and 60 per cent of Grant MacEwan seniors said yes. The average is just 45 per cent.

5. Alberta’s transfer system works.
In Sept. 2009, nearly 12,000 post-secondary students transferred between schools in the province. Many of the transfers are from the provinces’ teaching-focused institutions and community colleges into big research institutions. Harvey Weingarten, then-president of the University of Calgary, told the authors of Academic Reform that transfer students are “academically indistinguishable.”

6. Even with teaching-focused universities, Alberta remains a research leader.
Despite having more students in teaching-only institutions and only 11 per cent of Canada’s population, Alberta holds 17 per cent of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs, which come with up to $10-million apiece. Alberta also has 12 per cent of the prestigious Vanier Scholarships. The University of Alberta has the second highest per-faculty research funding in Canada at $309,332.

McGill, Simon Fraser and Mount Allison on top again in 2011

For the seventh year in a row, McGill University is ranked first in the Medical Doctoral category in the Maclean’s University Rankings, once again beating one-time king, the University of Toronto. Toronto, second again this year, has placed first in the category 12 times over the past 21 years. In third is the University of British Columbia. Queen’s is fourth. The University of Alberta is fifth.

So what’s given McGill such an edge? For one thing, McGill’s students win more national awards than Toronto’s. Another big factor is its student-faculty ratio. Toronto places dead last in the category (15), while McGill is fifth. On top of that, McGill dedicates more of its budget to scholarships and bursaries than any other school in the category. Toronto’s big advantage is its library collections—U of T trounces McGill in all four library-related categories. In the annual reputational survey, McGill has a slight edge too, achieving first place once again. But Toronto is catching up, having improved two positions since last year, from fourth to second. Two other Medical Doctoral universities improved by two spots on the reputational survey: Dalhousie University and the University of Sherbrooke.

In the Comprehensive Category, Simon Fraser University (1), the University of Victoria (2), the University of Waterloo (3), the University of Guelph (4), and Memorial University (5) all maintain their top-five positions. The biggest news in this category is that Brock University, Wilfrid Laurier University and Ryerson University all make their debuts, albeit in the bottom half. The three schools were moved into the Comprehensive category this year after recognizing both growth in their populations and increased graduate school offerings. Laurier has the highest debut—eleventh—on the strength of its reputation (7), faculty awards (5) and medical/science grants (4). In the reputational survey, Waterloo placed first among Comprehensive schools—as it does most years—while Simon Fraser, Guelph, Victoria and Ryerson rounded-out the top five.

In the Primarily Undergraduate category, the University of Prince Edward Island showed the biggest change, thanks in part to a strong showing in student awards, vaulting past Trent, St. Francis Xavier and Bishop’s to tie for fourth place with Lethbridge. It is bested only by Mount Allison University, Acadia University and the University of Northern British Columbia, which came first, second and third, respectively, in 2011. Mount A’s achievement is particularly impressive: it’s the fifteenth time that the Sackville, N.B. school has taken the top honour—a record number of wins. The University of Moncton also deserves commendation. Moncton moved up to fifteenth position, with the strongest showing on student/faculty ratio and an improved score on the reputational survey.

Maclean’s considers 14 numerical indicators of the quality of students, faculty, libraries and finances to rank 49 universities. Each is placed in one of three categories to recognize differences in levels of research funding, offerings, and the range of graduate programs. This year, three schools (Ryerson, Laurier and Brock) were moved into the Comprehensive category. For our complete 21st annual rankings, plus Canada’s best higher education journalism, pick up your copy of the 2011 Maclean’s University Rankings issue on newsstands Oct. 27. Here are the results:

Medical Doctoral universities offer a broad range of Ph.D. programs and have medical schools.

* Indicates a tie

Comprehensive universities have a significant degree of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees.

* Indicates a tie

Primarily Undergraduate universities are largely focused on undergraduate education with relatively fewer graduate programs and graduate students.

* Indicates a tie

Want to know more about how we rank? Read Measuring excellence.

Is your sociology, statistics, politics, business or law faculty on the list?

The University of Toronto ranks in the top of the pack in the QS World Rankings

The QS Top 200 World University Rankings for Social Science faculties have been released. QS is a global firm that has ranked schools for two decades. Their rankings are based on an academic reviews, reputation of schools and the number of journal citations per professor. Three Canadian schools — Toronto, McGill and UBC — dominate here, much like they did in the Arts/Humanities and Science rankings.

Canadian schools do especially well in the QS World law rankings, although they rate schools in a different order than our own carefully tailored Maclean’s Canadian Law School Rankings.

There are many great Canadian schools missing altogether, most of which are small liberal arts oases, like Acadia, St. Francis Xavier and UNBC. That suggests a one-size-fits-all ranking can’t capture the benefits of smaller schools, like smaller class sizes and more opportunities to interact with professors. The Maclean’s University Rankings issue (released in the fall) overcomes this problem by separating schools into three categories based on size and research-intensity. The rankings are also available in The Maclean’s Guide to Canadian Universities, which can be purchased online here or wherever you buy magazines.

Here is what QS World thinks about our social sciences and business faculties.

Sociology

#11. University of Toronto

#15. McGill University

#16. University of British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s University, Universite de Montreal, University of Alberta

#101-200. Simon Fraser University, University of Ottawa, University of Victoria, University of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario, York University, University of Manitoba

Statistics and Operational Research

#8. University of Toronto

#18. University of British Columbia

#20. McGill University

#51-100. McMaster University, Universite de Montreal, University of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario

#101-200. Carleton University, Universite Laval, Universite du Quebec, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, York University

Politics and International Studies

#19. University of Toronto

#25. McGill University

#30. University of British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s University, Universite de Montreal,

#101-200. University of Alberta, Carleton University, McMaster University, Simon Fraser University, University of Ottawa, University of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario

Law

#12. McGill University

#13. University of Toronto

#23. University of British Columbia

#39. University of Calgary

#42. York University

#50. University of Alberta

#51-100. Dalhousie University, Queen’s University, Universite de Montreal, University of Ottawa

Economics

#18. University of Toronto and McGill University (tied)

#24. University of British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s University, University of Western Ontario,

#101-200. Universite de Montreal, University of Alberta, York University, McMaster University, Simon Fraser University, University of Calgary

Accounting and Finance

#17. University of Toronto

#21. McGill University

#31. University of British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s University, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Western Ontario, York University

#101-200. Laval University, McMaster University, Simon Fraser University, University of Waterloo, Concordia University, Universite du Quebec, University of Ottawa

That mysterious substance guidance counsellors call ‘fit’ is not so mysterious anymore.

Deanna Jarvis, the 19-year-old first-year student on our cover, says she knows the University of Guelph is the right place for her. She’s just not sure why. Maybe it’s the gold and red leaves that litter the campus in the fall. She could never live in a concrete jungle, she says. Perhaps it’s that Guelph offers a rare major (adult development, families and wellbeing) that will teach her how to help people. “I just like to listen to friends and help them,” she says. Or maybe it’s that Guelph is a big enough school to keep famous playwrights like Judith Thompson on staff. Jarvis, a parttime actor, is a huge Thompson fan. Whatever the reason, Guelph just seems to fit.

Parents, students, university presidents and even education marketers are trying to nail down exactly what makes a school fit. Traditionally, school size and city size were the shorthand for determining where a particular student should go. Big schools offer more cultural opportunities; tiny schools offer more personal interaction, or so the theory goes. Those rules still apply, but sociologist James Côté, of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., has found another predictor for what he calls the “goodness of fit.” His research found students do best when their inner motivations match what the environment has to offer.

Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University, agrees that students should look inward to determine the best school for them. “For some students it will be a small, intimate, collegial environment,” says Traves. “For other students, their personalities will be sufficiently expansive and their strength of purpose and needs will be such that going to a small environment will be too much like an extension of high school.”

Côté would agree, but says university officials are not the only people to ask. “You’ll have to do the digging yourself,” he says. Some “universities don’t want to alienate prospective students who aren’t the right fit,” he explains. “Because they’re funded by tuition and the number of bums in seats.”

Assuming they’re not going to university because of parental pressure, most students have one of three motivations, according to Côté: the “personal and intellectual” motivation, the “career and materialism” motivation, or the “humanitarian” motivation.

For the student whose goal is to develop personally and intellectually, a small liberalarts oriented school is best, he says. “A good liberal arts education really requires smaller class sizes, so you can have seminars and contact with faculty,” he explains. “You’ll also be required to do more public speaking and writing. A large school simply can’t do this.” St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, N.S., and Quest University in Squamish, B.C., are examples of schools where students seeking personal and intellectual growth will find it, he says.

Large, reputable schools like McGill and the University of Toronto fit students who are personally and intellectually motivated, says Côté, but be sure “you’re outgoing or able to work on your own.” Students who choose the school primarily for its reputation, says Côté, need to remember that “they may never see any of the profs that make those schools famous.”

The second type of student, the “careeristmaterialist,” is someone who wants a degree mainly for the job and prestige. “The careeristmaterialist might fit at schools that are vocationally oriented,” says Côté. “We’re going that direction at Western,” he says, giving the example of the increasing popularity of degrees like the bachelor of management and organizational studies over the traditional broad B.A.

The third (and more rare) motivation to study is altruism. Côté offers King’s University College (a Western affiliate) as a good fit for the “humanitarianism-motivated” student, because of its social justice focus.

Ken Steele, an education marketing expert, agrees with Côté that universities themselves are unlikely to help you determine fit. Most universities are still trying to be “everything to everyone,” he says. However, he has seen a few encouraging examples of schools that are marketing with “goodness of fit” in mind. “Acadia [in Wolfville, N.S.] actually says it’s not for everyone,” explains Steele. “They want students to know they’re coming to a small town and that’s going to be a shock for some of them.”

William Barker, president of the University of King’s College in Halifax (an even smaller school than Acadia), suggests visiting as many schools as possible, sitting in on lectures, and staying overnight with a friend.

That’s advice Côté wants parents to hear. He says more parents should encourage their offspring to explore far and wide; too often they encourage offspring to choose the closest school to home in order to save money. “You may save a lot financially in the short run, but you will have lost in the long run,” he says. If a person fails at university because it’s the wrong fit, they risk losing millions of dollars in lifetime earnings, he explains—and it’s not a cheap investment. “If parents were forking out this kind of money in the stock market or real estate, they’d look at it much more carefully,” says Côté.

Of course, not everyone can afford to fly around the country to research each school. That’s why Maclean’s asked successful students from four schools exactly what makes their university the right fit for them. Their answers prove just how important it is for future students to ask themselves who they are and why they want a degree. Why? Just ask Côté. “If you don’t develop goals of what you want to get out of university, you potentially squander the most transformative experience of your life.”

With Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze

A student survey helps universities target areas for improvement.

Anne Celine Hansen, a fourth-year bachelor of management student at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, used to find herself stuck between classes killing time. “I wouldn’t really know what to do with myself,” she says. Hansen, who lives about a 20-minute walk from campus, could study at the library or sit in the cafeteria, but it was hard to connect with other people. Like many students living off-campus, she felt disconnected from the pulse of her university. “Students would take the bus up to campus, go to class and then take the bus back home,” says Hansen.

In 2006, UBC started administering the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a U.S.-based survey that indirectly measures educational quality by analyzing what students do with their time on campus. NSSE measures a university’s performance based on five key benchmarks—including student-faculty interaction, level of academic challenge and supportive campus environment—providing data for comparison across time and between institutions. Research has shown that higher levels of engagement can lead to greater student success. UBC’s results pointed to the disengagement that Hansen and others at Okanagan were feeling, so in 2008, the school decided to correct the problem. “We wanted to make sure that our commuter students had exactly the same campus life experience as the residence students, the same level of TLC,” says Ian Cull, associate vice-president of students at the Okanagan campus.

For complete student survey results, click here.

The school set up what it calls “collegia”—on-campus lounges providing space for commuter students to sit and do homework, talk, or just watch TV. They’re staffed by senior students, called collegia assistants, who answer questions, provide information about the university and set up social events. Hansen has been working as a collegia assistant since the program started. Students “are always coming in and talking to people, meeting people,” she says. “It becomes a big group.”

The issue of student engagement is becoming increasingly important for universities, especially since NSSE arrived at 11 Canadian schools in 2004. The survey has now been conducted at 64 institutions across Canada, with 11 more universities and one college set to participate for the first time this year. And as the years of data accumulate, schools are using the insight NSSE provides to create programs tailored to improving the quality of their students’ education.

Administrators at the University of New Brunswick had little cash to spend on new programs, but they didn’t want to waste their NSSE data. So Tony Secco, UNB’s vice-president, academic, had the information broken down by faculty and distributed to the deans. Deciding to concentrate primarily on one benchmark—student-faculty interaction—they pooled ideas and came up with several low-cost ways to better connect professors with their pupils. The administration hosted student-faculty mixers, held faculty workshops on student engagement, asked professors to spend more time mentoring after class, and converted unused space on campus into common and student services rooms where faculty and students can meet. While there are no hard data yet on how well the initiatives are working, the response from students and teachers has been positive. “Engagement in any exercise is very strongly linked to the fulfillment that is sensed by the individual,” says Secco. For his part, UNB president Eddy Campbell observes: “NSSE is a good instrument for measuring that engagement. And it allows us a good look at the places where we need to do better.”

But NSSE isn’t just supposed to be used internally. Its results are meant to be shared across schools, and are most effective when broken down into faculties and student groups. Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy process. “There’s no formal mechanism for sharing information across institutions,” says Chris Conway, principal investigator for the NSSE intervention project—a group, funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, that examines NSSE’s effectiveness. He says Canada needs “a more systematic data sharing and analysis exercise” that breaks down information by school and then by faculty, making cross-institutional comparisons easy. Conway and a committee of educators from around the country are working to create a national data-sharing initiative that will do exactly that. So far, 44 universities have signed on to the project, and Conway is hoping to release preliminary results within four months.

Conway is cautious, however, not to draw conclusions prematurely, noting that although NSSE has built a good foundation of knowledge in Canada, the programs it’s helped to create are still in their infancy, and universities won’t know how effective they are without a few more years of data. “I don’t think we’re at the point now where we can say a given type of experience gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of quality improvement,” he says.

Still, Jillian Kinzie, the NSSE institute’s associate director, is optimistic, pointing out that Canadian schools are continually improving their scores and bettering their educational programs. “The thing that impresses me the most is the commitment to action,” she says. “Digging in and really spending time thinking about what these results tell us about the quality of students’ educational experiences, that’s the most important part—converting the results into some sort of action to improve the educational experience.”

Which universities get top marks? 90,000 students have their say

Almost every day for the past few years, Meg Martin has spent three hours on public transit, commuting to and from the University of Calgary. She looks forward to Wednesdays, when her first class doesn’t start until 11 a.m. and she can sleep in. Most other days, the fourth-year political science and English major is on campus by 9 a.m., and because she’s involved in student politics, she often stays late into the night. “The hardest part about being a commuter is the exhaustion,” says Martin. But early in her university career, she decided to get involved in student politics, in part to make new friends, have a place to rest and study between classes, and so that she could avoid feeling like an anonymous number and instead become “a member of some type of community.” Right now, she’s gearing up for student elections, where she’s running for vice-president, academic.

Want to read more? Full student survey results are available here.

Click here to go to the web-exclusive student surveys.

In some ways, Martin is the typical undergraduate: she’s 21, attends an urban university with a student body that is the size of a small city and lives at home with her parents. However, Martin is also deeply involved in campus activities—and that sets her apart from many students, at Calgary and elsewhere. She demonstrates some of the attributes of what the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) calls an “engaged student.”

Research has shown that various different forms of engagement—from Martin’s high level of extracurricular contact with peers to curricular extras such as the opportunity to work closely with professors—are likely to lead to more learning, and greater student success. In an effort to raise the level of student engagement at Calgary, officials hired Martin and three other students to help conduct surveys, focus groups and interviews of staff, students and administrators. “This is exciting, because it’ll give me the opportunity to get my hands dirty and connect with stakeholders at this university,” says Martin.

On the following pages, we present the NSSE results from 53 Canadian institutions. NSSE, a student survey that seeks to indirectly measure educational quality, has become an essential analytical tool used by most Canadian universities. The survey pinpoints what students are doing while they are in school and on campus; NSSE then generates benchmark results that show how well those activities and behaviours line up with what research shows are educational best-practices that are likely to lead to more and deeper learning. The higher a school’s scores on the five benchmarks—featured on the accompanying pages—the better the chance, according to NSSE, that its students are learning and getting the most out of their university experience.

The NSSE was developed a decade ago by a group of American education professors, in part as an alternative to university rankings such as those published by U.S. News & World Report (and Maclean’s). NSSE’s creators believed that a student survey of undergraduate quality might be able to provide universities, students and the wider public with essential information about each university. “An extensive research literature relates particular classroom activities and specific faculty and peer practices to high-quality undergraduate student outcomes,” wrote NSSE’s creators. The survey aimed to measure and promote the use of those best practices.

Students tell what they really think about their university, from the size of their classes to the quality of their profs.

Heres you will find additional results from the Canadian University Survey Consortium (CUSC).  The CUSC survey, which was commissioned by the universities, asks more than 100 questions about specific aspects of the undergraduate experience—inside the classroom and beyond—designed to provide universities with data to help them assess programs and services.

In 2008, 31 institutions took part, including two universities—UBC and the University of New Brunswick—that surveyed multiple campuses. Surveys were sent to a random sample of approximately 1,000 undergraduates in all years at each university. Institutions with fewer than 1,000 undergrads surveyed the entire cohort. Nearly 12,000 students responded.

In each chart, universities are listed in descending order. Order was determined by the percentage of students who chose the highest level of satisfaction of agreement when responding, for example, “excellent.”

Past year’s surveys are available here.
Want more? Full student survey results are available here.

A primer for navigating your college and university choices

Each year, a new crop of young Canadians tries to figure out how to write the next chapter of their lives. And each year, tens of thousands of them find the answer in higher education. This issue, now in its 18th year and containing our largest universities package ever, is about helping you to make the most informed higher education choice by opening up an entire country’s worth of educational possibilities. On this website, you will find advice on how to pay for school and how to spend your time wisely once you are there. There’s news on the latest trends in higher education, from a new university that aims to completely redefine undergraduate education, to a province where most universities are promising four years’ worth of scholarship support to even average students, but with fine print that causes the overwhelming majority to see only a fraction of the money.

You’ll hear from students who were recently undergrads, talking about how they did it—and how they might do it differently if given another chance. You’ll be presented with the results of the nation’s most extensive surveys of university students; surveys conducted amongst tens of thousands of students by the universities themselves. These student surveys reveal the level of satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) at each university, as well as providing objective, university-by-university assessments of educational quality. And this issue of course also contains Maclean’s annual university rankings.

But before you dive in, you’ll need a road map. The Canadian higher education system can be difficult to understand and navigate because it offers so many choices, in both courses of study and types of institutions. In higher education, Canada offers two basic streams: university and college. Colleges mostly provide practical education in fields such as the trades, and the programs of study are generally two years or shorter. Universities mostly concentrate on offering four-year degrees in the arts and sciences; they’re also where you’ll go to school if you want to become a professional, such as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, accountant or professor.

There are bright lines between the two types of institutions—but there’s also an increasing amount of common ground. To take one example, you can study business at college or university. Many colleges, which used to focus exclusively on short training courses and two-year diplomas, are now offering some four-year bachelor’s degrees. College and university are distinct, but they’re also partially overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. The two have a long history of partnership—in Western Canada in particular, many students begin the first year or two of their university degree at a local college and complete it at a university, as part of a transfer program. Some universities and colleges share programs and a few even share campuses, such as the University of Guelph-Humber, where students simultaneously earn a diploma from Humber College and a degree from the University of Guelph.

Use Maclean’s exclusive data to build your own, customized university ranking

This tool offers you the ability to select up to seven performance indicators(measures of university quality)drawn from the most recent edition of the Maclean’s University Rankings, and then weight them according to your own preferences.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE TOOL

How it works:
Select (up to seven at a time) indicators. Then click NEXT.

You need to assign a weight to each indicator so that the total will add up to 100 per cent. For example, you could decide that the following indicators are most important to you:

• Student awards: 10 per cent
• Library acquisitions: 25 per cent
• Student/faculty ratio: 10 per cent
• Student services: 20 per cent
• Awards per full-time faculty: 10 per cent
• Scholarships & bursaries: 20 per cent
• Reputational survey: 5 per cent

Once your total adds up to 100 per cent, click NEXT.

Select the Canadian universities you wish to compare. You can choose all universities, or select by region, such as universities in the West, Ontario, Quebec or the Atlantic region. Or you can create your own list of up to 49 individual institutions. Click NEXT.

Our tool will compute and compare your custom criteria, or indicators, across all of the schools you selected. Voila! Your own personalized ranking of Canadian universities.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE TOOL

CLICK HERE TO GO TO A DESCRIPTION OF THE INDICATORS

Note: Ranking for the Personalized University Ranking Tool is not calculated in the same way as the annual Maclean’s university rankings. Though the two use common data, the rankings use a statistical percentile method and are three separate rankings, one for each of the three categories of universities: Primarily Undergraduate, Comprehensive and Medical-Doctoral. As such, results obtained from this online tool may not agree with the Maclean’s annual rankings, even if the same set of weights are applied to the indicators.

Which universities get top marks? 87,000 students have their say

It’s mid-January, a couple of weeks after the Christmas break, and Mark Woodcroft, a fourth-year biochemistry major at Trent University, is hanging out in the lab with professor Steven Rafferty, his research supervisor and chair of Trent’s chemistry department. Woodcroft is doing what many Canadian undergraduates never get a chance to do: an independent research project under faculty supervision.

Want to read more? Full student survey results are available here.

Click here to go to the web-exclusive student surveys.

So, a reporter asks, what’s your research project about? Woodcroft casts a sly smile at his prof and then launches deadpan into an explanation of the “bioaccumulation of perfluorinated carboxylic acids.” His audience predictably befuddled, Woodcroft stops mid-sentence. He and Rafferty chuckle in unison. It sounds like a well-rehearsed routine. Not something many 22-year-olds get to cook up with a professor.

“In upper-year courses, the class size is small enough for a professor to know each student by name,” says Woodcroft. “I also know everyone in my program by name. I doubt many students at a larger school can say that.”

Personal contact with faculty members, a sense of community among undergrads and classes that push students to their intellectual limits—these are all things that many undergraduate students desire. Research suggests that these also promote learning; in the language of the National Survey of Student Engagement, these and other aspects of student engagement are “correlates of quality.” And according to the NSSE Benchmarks of Effective Educational Practice results appearing on the following pages, undergraduate educational quality at Canadian universities—with only a few exceptions—is below that of American universities.

Below you will also find results from the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium, or CUSC, a Canada-only survey that is much more tilted toward assessing student satisfaction. In 2007, CUSC surveyed first-year students at 32 universities. You can find results for seven additional CUSC student satisfaction questions on our website, at www.macleans.ca/oncampus.

While undergraduate student satisfaction remains relatively high at Canadian institutions, the NSSE benchmark results suggest a different story: satisfied or not, many Canadian university campuses are not as engaging and may not be offering as good an educational experience as their American peers. And the problem is particularly pronounced at Canada’s large research universities—the schools educating the overwhelming majority of Canadian undergrads.

The American-based NSSE survey is a tool widely used by universities to analyze, benchmark and improve their institutional performance. Since 1999, the American-based NSSE (pronounced “Nessie”) has been conducting its survey on a growing number of campuses, and calculating its Benchmarks of Effective Educational Practice for each participating school. Beginning in 2004, a growing number of Canadian universities began to take part in NSSE. The biggest push came from Bob Rae’s 2005 review of post-secondary education in Ontario. Rae called on the province to establish measures for evaluating quality and publicly reporting on system performance. In his review, Rae asked, “How are we doing? How are others doing? Is there a jurisdiction that does it better?” His conclusion: “We simply don’t know enough about how we are doing or how others are doing.” To this end, Rae recommended that all Ontario universities participate in NSSE. All Ontario universities have done so over the past two years, and most universities in the rest of the country have joined them. Several of the 47 universities that Maclean’s surveys in its annual rankings of Canadian universities have never participated in NSSE; they include Bishop’s University, Cape Breton University, St. Francis Xavier University, Memorial University, Université de Moncton and Université de Sherbrooke.